Storytelling and photography

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1. You don’t need a Leica or 5D Mark II, not now or even soon. Actually, expensive equipment will more than likely hinder you by inflating your ego and making it less likely for you to experiment and learn new things (something you should always be doing, especially early on).

2. Practice shooting animals, friends, and relatives to better your timing skills at catching that decisive or in between moment where the stories are told. Research Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work or look at sports photography to get an eye for this.

3. In street photography or shooting strangers at events, be unobtrusive and try to capture people in their moments rather than asking them to pose. Act like it’s normal, be friendly and don’t be afraid to look like you’re having fun. Smile and don’t be afraid to snap the picture when they’re looking right at your lens, eyes really are the windows to the soul (or whatever).

4. Shoot a wide variety of subjects, pets, things, juxtapositions, also play with your settings and experiment with the unknown until it becomes known.

5. Put together a set of objects to shoot that tell a story, draw things on friends to shoot, creative practice like this will help you in every other aspect of your photography.

6. Don’t be too proud to shoot for free, especially for those who couldn’t have paid for it anyway, events, fundraisers, your friends kids, local animal shelters. Shoot a variety of subject matter so you can find out what you’re best at.

7. Post your best work and ask well established artists and photographers to analyze them and give you critique. Never stop learning.

8. Research heavily, swim in the work of those you admire. Learn how they work with their equipment, better yet how they work with their subjects.

9. Don’t worry about upgrading your equipment until you’ve found out what you’re good at, and what you need to move to the next level.

10. Always be prepared, have an extra battery charged, spare memory card, and keep your equipment properly stored and with you just in case.

I’ve been in a kinda of a funk lately, no job means no money going towards even the cheapest of camera gear, meaning my flickr stream is on a major plateau… I figured to combat this I’d get back into the long exposures, these being the ones taken in a car at night, anywhere from 1 to 30 seconds long, pointing the lens towards various light sources and mostly letting the ride dictate what direction they go… It’s really quite fun and to see what comes up, and to try and get “better” at taking them even when you can’t actually see anything in the viewfinder mid shot. Comments/ critique welcome as always.

Weather’s been pretty iffy lately, fluctuating from typical winter blizzards to it all melting two weeks later and not snowing again for another month… I feel like we as a people don’t tend to think of things like the bigger picture when it distracts or complicates the tasks at hand… I suppose life would be better spent not worrying so I’m just gonna try not thinking about it again until the shit hits the fan like everyone else.

Anyways, these just some areas around where I live, in this halfway winter wonderland.

I was looking at some old pictures and realized I’ve taken a picture of the silhouette I’d referenced in the last post. Not as cool a picture, I don’t even recall if I included my shadow in there on purpose or not. Wishing it were a bit warmer out, I might not have just added so many damn cat photos on my flickr stream.

It’s amazing how something as simple as taking a few pictures can bring your mood from somewhere around a zero or one, up to around a solid 9 or 10 in seconds. I’mma try to keep this short since I’m on my phone as the wireless has been out of commission for the past couple of days. Now, at least here I’m keeping it no big secret that I’ve been out of work and beyond broke for the past month or two. To keep this short: it’s obvious whoever said money didn’t buy happiness was over simplifying; not being paid and having to basically mooch off the people you love is one of the most stressful, least gratifying things anyone can really do in life. Now, I know many people and most often we ‘starving artist’ folk are all prone to this ‘being broke’ shit at times, and I’m even saying my shit’s any worse than your shit or their shit. I’m just saying something, cause, like I said.. it’s annoying.

So, back to my original point, I was initially feeling pretty shitty after a particularly unlucky day when at around 4 in the morning I decided to stay up until a bit later as it had started snowing and I figured I’d bum around with the camera some what with the neat lighting and snow. Another great thing about the crap my brain swims through is all the actually important stuff I forget, like charging camera batteries when they get low, so of course I had about 14% remaining which was annoying since I wanted to get some of the car trails going by. Praying that my low battery would last long enough for one more shot, I caught a sideways glance of my shadow watching for the next car with camera and tripod set up. I could pick nothing apart about this simple sillouette, it merely looked like a photographer. I don’t mean this to sound like some grand revelation of identity, I just thought it was interesting how reassuring that basic visual acknowledgment of who I was… was. But anyways, luckily a car passed before my battery died and allow me to take the picture I had set up, which even though it wasn’t really anything important, did feel pretty amazing. I just feel like I should dwell just a bit on this so I stop regretting the investment/ wanting to sell the camera, no matter how much out of this rut it might bring me, it truly would feel like selling a bit of my soul.

I find it mildly annoying this obligation to fill this thing in, I’m at that somewhat awkward phase where no one’s here but, well, me. I’m not too worried about it, hopefully I’ll get to a point where I might even miss that feeling. No one to be impressed embarrassed for me, no one but my future self to look back on and think hey, what the hell was he thinking? Oh well. I’m building it so y’all will come. This shiz’s the only thing I’m alright at after all…

Anyway, doc appointment tomorrow since I’ve had bronchitis for about six weeks exactly now… near future appointments to check back on knee, and have wisdoms removed. Wisdom is overrated anyway… Will update flickr for the first time in forever tomorrow. Too tired tonight and wondering why I’m going to bed at 6:30 in the morning.

Blessings: good friends when they can chill after years like it were still back in the day, and amazing people you meet by such odd chance that they make you question fate as a possible thing of reality.